"This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption... Beer!"
-Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Friar Tuck

I have been meaning to create a page dedicated to my brewing for some time, and haven't gotten around to it.  Due in part to laziness, and in part to the fact that I am forever working on my brewing system, and never felt it was ready for public viewing.  I still don't feel that it is done, but I have realized that it will probably never be "done", so what you see here is what I have so far. 

One of the biggest reasons that I wanted to publish what I have made is to try to help other brewers who are looking to build a system by providing ideas and examples of what they could do.  This is not to say that my methods are the preferred way to brew.  There are many ways to skin this cat, mine is just one way. 

One great thing, among the many great things, about Homebrewers is that we are always willing to teach, and share what we know.  I would not have been able to build my system with the relative ease that I did without many examples from many different brewers all over the world.  Some of their ideas I liked, and others I didn't.  I incorporated What I felt would work best for me, and made my system the way I wanted it.  Please see my links page for many examples of different types of brewing systems.

My brewing system is what is called a HERMS system.  This stands for Heat Exchange Recirculation Mash System.  There are many benefits to a HERMS system over other systems in my opinion, but many others would disagree, and I can not discount their opinions.  As stated previously, my way is just what works for me.

A HERMS system relies on the exchange of heat from copper coils that are submerged in heated water to heat or maintain temperature or wort (brewing beer).  Some of the major benefits of HERMS systems are Superior clarity of the wort due to recirculation of the wort which forms a natural filter with the husks of the grains in the mash tun; temperature control which exceeds that of a traditional non-recirculation system; and repeatability which is a goal of most Homebrewers because if you make a really great beer, you'd like to be able to repeat it if the desire ever arose. 

There is a similar type of systems called a RIMS system, which stands for Recirculation Infusion Mash System.  RIMS systems typically have a chamber through which wort is flowed and a heating element, usually an electric water heater element, heats the wort as it passes through the chamber.  Let me preface by saying that there are a lot of brewers who make really great beer using RIMS systems, but when building my own system I was concerned about scorching and carmelization of the wort due to direct contact with the heating element.  In my mind the "soft heat" of a heat exchange system made more sense, and I have had good results with my system. 

A HERMS system is not the ideal system for step mashing.  I am able to raise temps using my HERMS, but it isn't as efficient as other direct heated systems, or infusion step mashing, but using a HERMS system does not preclude me from being able to use infusion mashing, and in many styles of beer, such as Scottish Ales,  that are traditionally infusion mashed some carmelization is desirable, and can impart some unusual characteristics.

My system is a three tier system, which is probably unnecessary due to the fact that I use a pump, so gravity feeding is not necessary, but building a three tier system allowed me to use more vertical space, and take up less total space when my system is stowed. 

The frame is welded angle iron that I built at the auto body hobby shop aboard Camp Lejeune, NC.  I am in debt to the guys at the hobby shop for their help in making my system.  Although they all looked at me like I was crazy, and asked repeatedly if it was legal, they were always willing to help.  I am not a trained welder, and developed a "bigger the blob, better the job" approach to my welding, but I always tested my welds by jumping on each tier of the frame to ensure that it would hold my weight.  I figure if it will hold 180 pounds jumping, it should be able to hold the volumes of water that I would use in brewing.  It has performed very well.  I do plan, eventually, to get back down to an auto hobby shop to bead blast the frame, and paint it using a high temperature paint designed for grills, but it works great as is.

I use both propane and electricity in my system.  I have a T at my propane tank that allows me to use the Hot Liquor Tank burner, and the Boiler burner simultaneously.  The HLT also has two 1500 watt, 120 volt electric water heater elements in it for precision control of the temperature, and I really only use the propane for bringing the water up to my initial strike temperature. 

My HLT is a converted keg that I sent to Sabco at www.kegs.com for modification.  They guys are Sabco are great.  I can't say enough about their professionalism and attention to detail.  I sent them a bitmap image of where I wanted fittings welded, and they sent me back a product of meticulous detail.  I highly recommend them to anyone looking to make welded modifications to stainless steel.  Using the 1/2" fittings I am able to connect the 25 feet of 1/2" copper tuning that makes my recirculation coil.  The coil is connected through the walls of the keg to a 3 way ball valve.  This ball valve directs the flow of the recirculating wort either into the coils, or it bypasses the coils directly back on top of the grains in the Mash Tun.  Eventually I would like to get my hands onto a 3-way electric ball valve that I can control based on the temperature in my mash tun.  Presently I manually redirect the flow.  The HLT also has a 1/2" fitting for a ball valve, one for a sight glass and a thermometer, and two 1" fittings for the water heater elements that maintain the temperature in the HLT.  The water heater elements are controlled by one of the two Electronic Temperature controllers on my control panel.  The ball valve to drain the keg has a dip tube that runs to the bottom of the keg in order to completely empty the keg.  When I run it dry there is less than an 1/4 of a cup left in the keg.

The sight glass is nothing more than a 1/2" NPT to 3/8" barbed elbow fitting.  I press fit 3/8" inner diameter tubing into the barbed fitting, and used 1/2" straight copper tubing over the plastic tubing to hold the plastic tubing up, and to indicate volume marks in the HLT.  I made the volume marks by pouring a gallon at a time from a 1 gallon jug into the HLT and marking the volume using a brother p-touch label maker.  Nothing fancy, but it works well.

On all ball valves and tubing that I use I have 1/2" polysulfone quick disconnects.  These QD's are a god send.  I didn't want to permanently connect any of my vessels because I didn't want to buy a multitude of ball valves to shut off and open lines to ensure that flow is directed to the correct place.  The polysulfone connectors are rated to 250 degrees, and with a little food grade lubricant the perform excellently, with no leaking of liquid, and don't allow air into lines that are being pumped. 

I added a stirrer to the HLT because my initial heat exchange inside the HLT was not very good.  After doing some reading about convection I decided that a low RPM motor and a small propeller of some sort would probably help, and it has done wonders to improve the heat exchange.  I bought a 60 RPM gear motor, and a small propeller from EBAY, and rigged the motor so that it can be removed from the HLT for cleaning.  Many purists would shun me for using anything but all stainless steel throughout my system, but the bottom line is that I can't afford it.  I would love to have used a stainless shaft and a stainless propeller, as well as stainless clover clamps instead of my polysulfone fittings, but I don't have the means, and I still make great beers.

My Mash Tun is a 10 gallon circular igloo cooler.  I went with a 10 gallon cooler, because I like to make 5 gallon batches of "Big" beers that have a hefty grain bill, and because I will occasionally make a 10 gallon batch of beer, but for most brewers who brew average 5 gallon batches, a five gallon cooler would suffice.  The cooler holds heat equally as well as it holds cold, and it allows me to keep my grains at a relatively constant temperature once I have reached my desired mash temperature.  There is some loss due to recirculation through uninsulated lines, but using the recirculation coils in the HLT I am able to bring the temperature back up if it drops at all.  I built a recirculation manifold for the mash tun to gently return the recycled wort to the grain bed.  If the wort is allowed to plow into the grain bed it can burrow holes through the grain bed which eliminates the filtering action of the grain bed, as well as not evenly distributing heat throughout the mash tun.  I tried a few different types of recirculation manifolds an finally settled on a design that I stole from Rick Calley.  The only difference between mine and Rick's is that mine is just press fit together for ease of cleaning.  It is made of rigid 1/2" copper tubing that is adjustable based on the height of the grain bed.  I adjust the return manifold up and down using a hose clamp so that it rests just at wort level.  It gently returns wort to each quadrant of the mash tun without any boring into the grain bed.  I use a stainless false bottom in my mash tun that I bought from Beer, Beer, and More Beer.  I highly recommend B3.  They are honest, have decent prices, and have a great selection.  Of course one should always support their Local Homebrew Shop, but I won't ask my LHBS to order something that I can order myself.  I just don't see the point in adding another person in to the chain.  Some folks will say that a false bottom isn't necessary, and that any number of screens or manifolds made from slotted cooper pipe work equally as well, and I can't dispute that, but during my reading in preparation to build my system I heard stories of other types of manifolds causing stuck runoffs.  I just decided to err on the side of caution.

I also bought a thermo thingy from Zymico which I used with an electronic Polder thermometer for some time.  The thermo thingy is just a through wall fitting, and if I had more selection locally I certainly would have just built it myself.  I also bought a 1/2" thermo well from B3 which I now use in place of the original cooler spigot as a well for the temperature probe from one of the two Electronic Temperature Controllers that are on the control panel.  At first I was using a ball valve in place of the original spigot, and I had a dip tube running down below the false bottom through a hole in the center of the false bottom.  For a number of reasons I decided to move the ball valve to the bottom of the cooler using an adapter that I have since forgotten where I got from.  The adapter is a through wall fitting that allows me to attach a 90 degree street elbow, and a ball valve to that.  I just feel that I get better drainage with the valve on the bottom.

The valve on the bottom connects to my pump.  The pump is a magnetically coupled March pump that I got from a company called moving brews who have since gone out of business, but B3 and many other carry the same pump.  The advantage to magnetically coupled pumps are that the shaft from the motor does not actually drive the impeller.  The motor drives a magnet, which moves another magnet on the opposite side of a wall which houses the impeller where no oil, or other materials from the operation of the motor can come into contact with your wort.  It is important to make sure that your pump is rated to the temperatures under which you will be using it.    Magnetically coupled pumps are not typically self priming, which means that they must be below the level of the liquid that you are pumping, and the impeller chamber must fill completely.  I had a number of problems when I first started using my pump from air getting into the lines, to air not being able to get out of the impeller chamber.  A few tips I can pass along is to use pipe clamps with any barbed fittings because when reinforced tubing gets hot is loosens it's hold on barbed fittings a bit and allows air into the line which will eventually build up in the impeller chamber and stop the flow of liquid.  The single greatest improvement I made to help my pump was to change the orientation of the pump head.  Most magnetically coupled pumps will allow you to take the head off the pump and rotate it 90 degrees by removing a few screws.  The advantage to this is that with the pump oriented so that the intake faces down, and the output faces up air can much more easily get out of the pump head.  Before I turn my pump on I will fill the pump head with liquid and then tap and shake the pump a bit to allow bubbles to rise out of the pump head.  When I do turn the pump on it works like a charm.  

I plug my pump into an outlet on the control panel that is controlled by a light switch dimmer knob.  This allows me to control how fast or slow the pump runs.  It isn't real easy to control, and I'm not sure how great it is for the motor, but it seems to work well.  Because I do not have an electric 3 way ball valve on the HLT, in the later stages of mashing, after the wort has been recirculating for a while, I will sometimes plug the pump into the ETC that is reading the mash tun temperature so that when the temperature in the mash tun drops below my set point the pump automatically recirculates the wort through the coils in the HLT.

When the mash has finished it is time to mash out and sparge.  I will usually raise the temperature in the mash tun to nearly 170 degrees by recirculating through the HLT.  This takes about ten minutes.  Then I connect the HLT output to a sparge arm that I got from Listermann Manufacturing.  Dan Listerman is a very inventive fellow, who has a lot of great products that make you think "Duh, why didn't I think of that".  He also frequents a great brewing news group at rec.crafts.brewing where I have always been impressed that he purely offers advice, and never tries to hawk his wares.  His products speak for themselves.  Enough about Dan.  The sparge arm I use sits atop the mash tun with the top removed and slowly sprinkles water over the grains.  The idea here is to wash all the fermentable sugars from the grains down into the boiler.  You don't want to disturb the grain bed by pouring water to roughly, and the sparge arm is perfect.  Some guys use float switches to balance the water coming in via the sparge arm, and the wort going out to the boiler.  I have found it pretty easy to set and maintain a level of water about 1" above the grain bed.  I don't check my gravity as I sparge.  I sparge for about 45 minutes, and collect seven gallons in the boiler for a five gallon batch.  By the time I am done the run off from the mash tun is clear, and I have always felt that at my level, gravity readings are unnecessary.

I collect seven gallons in the boiler because I boil for 90 minutes and lose about a gallon an hour, and I lose about a half gallon in the pelletized hops inside nylon bags.  Depending upon the hop additions that my recipe calls for, and may have from one to four nylon hop bags hanging in the boiler when the boil is done. 

When the boil is done I will cool the wort to around 65 degrees using my counterflow wort chiller.  I am very happy with the chiller, but I can not recommend the company I got it from, so I won't even mention them.  If you are interested contact me and I'll warn you against doing business with this company.  I used to use an immersion chiller that sits in the wort to chill the wort, but I found it to be inefficient unless I stirred the wort, when gave me concerns about infection of the wort after it had stopped boiling.  This led to me getting the counterflow chiller.  I am happy with the chiller, but I am meticulous about cleaning it.  Because I can not see inside it I am always concerned about infection from the chiller.  Before I chill a wort I will run a bleach water soloution through the chiller for a few minutes using the pump, and then I will run some boiling water from the boiler through the chiller.  Obviously I run the boiling water through the chiller prior to boiling the wort.  I have a male QD on one end of the chiller, and a female on the other, so I can seal the chiller once I feel it is clean. 

I ferment in glass carboys.  I always start in a a six and a half gallon carboy because of the large amount of foam that is created during the ferment.  I have plastic caps for the carboy that snap on top and have two holes.  One hole is for the air lock, and the second hole I use for a .5 micron aeration stone that is attached to an aquarium pump with an air filter on it.  I have found that this greatly reduces lag time until the ferment starts, which reduces chances of infection from random bacteria.  I have also found that my ferments are stronger and longer since I started using the aeration stone.  As soon as I see signs of fermentation I turn the aquarium pump off, and I frequently remove the stone and airlock and install a blow off tube for the first few days of fermentation.  The blow off tube is just 1" tubing from a hardware store.  One end fits tightly in the neck of the carboy, and the other end sits in a bowl of water which acts as an airlock.  If any of the foam from fermentation bubbles up out of the carboy it will run into the bowl and not cause any harm, where as if it were to get into a normal airlock it could do any number of things from clogging the airlock and causing it to shoot up into the ceiling, to causing the carboy to explode.  Sometimes I rack to a secondary fermenter, other times I don't.  When fermenting an ale it only takes 2-2 1/2 weeks and sitting on the trub for that long I don't believe is harmful.  If it were a lager, which ferments for much longer, I would use a secondary, and possibly a tertiary fermenter. 

to the left are a few thumbnails of my system.  I plan to add more as time allows.